


Paperboy

by iseoks



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Auror Ron Weasley, Denial of Feelings, Draco/Harry/Hermione/Ron Friendship, Healer Draco Malfoy, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Eighth Year, Redeemed Draco Malfoy, it's not really specified what Hermione is doing, lots and lots of confessions of many kinds, mostly on Harry's part
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 11:06:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12816192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iseoks/pseuds/iseoks
Summary: Some inexplicable warmth circulates in Harry's chest upon the realization that Draco and Hermione have slowly built a bond overtop a foundation of mutual disgust. It almost makes him feel, for the first time, like anything is possible. He tells himself that it's because he's happy for Hermione to be able to move on. He removes Draco from the equation in his mind because the less he thinks about him, the more likely the unexplainable faction of this feeling is to be suppressed.





	Paperboy

There exists an archaic truth that time heals all wounds. And, like most notions that hold true regarding life, it is stunningly vague and, for that same quality, incomprehensibly frustrating - for _'time'_ can imply any increment from ten seconds to ten generations into the future. Harry had never been one to hold onto proverbial statements for comfort. However, he'd heard Hermione mumble the aforementioned phrase once as she, being the champion she is, divided her attention among several tasks, including holding conversation concerning Draco Malfoy's unexpectedly natural integration into their tight ring of friendship.

At first, it feels like leaving the tent open while knowing there lies a bear just beyond the canvas - the apprehension is so tight in the air, the green-eyed mage can nearly taste it. And it isn't as though he retains the age-old animosity toward the aristocrat; in fact, the two of them seem to have silently agreed that their past feuding has come to an end. It feels juvenile, now, in light of all they've been through. What use becomes of dwelling on meaningless tears in the fabric of the past?

But still it feels ... _off._ Shockingly, Hermione has come to like Draco quite a bit, despite the obviously tainted origins of their relationship - but being that the two of them spent a considerable amount of time together upon returning to Hogwarts to complete their formal education, the witch must have realized the core similarities she hadn't before paid mind to: both serious scholars with complementary fields of expertise, both constantly striving for excellence for personal development, and both in incredibly useful both in the classroom and on the field. Hermione had once said to Harry and Ron that she felt as though she had met an entirely different person.

Some inexplicable warmth circulates in Harry's chest upon the realization that Draco and Hermione have slowly built a bond overtop a foundation of mutual disgust. It almost makes him feel, for the first time, like anything is possible. He tells himself that it's because he's happy for Hermione to be able to move on. He removes Draco from the equation in his mind because the less he thinks about him, the more likely the unexplainable faction of this feeling is to be suppressed.

Ron is a lot harder to sway. Maybe on the surface it's because he's spent a lot less time with Draco - Hermione was the only one of their trio to return to Hogwarts after reconstruction. Though, Harry figures it has something to do with the Malfoy-Weasley vendetta Ron was raised into, which makes more sense than it should, when its one-sidedness is taken into account. Draco doesn't seem very bothered by Ron's presence at all, on the occasion that they cross paths (relatively often considering that Ron and Hermione have become an item, and Draco and Hermione study together quite frequently). Harry actually asks the Malfoy heir himself about this, wondering if there still lies any legitimacy to the families' distaste for one another.

Draco had only sighed and shrugged his beautiful shoulders, muttering that it was never _his_ issue, but his _father's_. Harry doesn't question him any further about it.

Eventually, though, there comes a point where _Molly Weasley_ convinces her son to lay off Draco - which provides both Harry and Ron with astonishment. That is, until the former recalls the time during the war where a dire understanding above his realm of comprehension had passed between Molly, and Draco's mother, Narcissa.

Contrary to that time, however, Draco Malfoy is no longer 'just a boy.' He's grown into a skilled and powerful wizard - not to mention a gorgeous young man, though that comes as surprise to none. He had always been a satisfying sight, to say the least, and though Harry would rather be hexed than speak it aloud, he had always looked at Draco with an aesthetic fondness in his eyes. But his features seem to have outgrown the childish and snobbish sneer they so often sported the first few years Harry had known him. Instead, now etched into the harmonious rhythm of his countenance is a fearless, confident gaze - sometimes accentuated by a smirk that alludes to an esoteric knowledge that he may or may not truly possess, the effect of which is only strengthened by such ambiguity. This development makes him impossibly more attractive; often, Harry's eyes linger just a little longer than necessary just to admire.

Hermione notices. Hermione notices everything.

It's why she suddenly starts up an insistence that the two of them sit beside or across from each other whenever they've assembled for a meal or some similar occasion; also why she always seems to have this knowing look on her face whenever she serves as an audience to any interaction between them. It becomes annoying, and embarrassing - but Harry knows this is only because she's _right_. She hasn't even said anything, technically, but she's right.

It happens on a particular evening that Hermione and Ron can't join them for their somewhat usual sit-down to discuss the events of the day at whatever scale. Hermione is requested by Headmistress McGonagall to do some 'valuable end-of-the-year work' around the school, as she had so descriptively articulated it, and Ron's presence is ordered by Molly to entertain one of his brothers' first visit home in months.

This leaves Harry and Draco alone. It doesn't seem so daunting at first, as Harry considers it to be their typical get-together, just without half the party. But he comes to realize that the missing half had served as a buffer for his having to face this strange feeling about Draco directly, which has only seemed to worsen with time.

The heir, however, appears as least bothered as possible - easily sparking up a conversation about how Slytherin seized the House Cup for his final year. Not that it would mean much, since he wouldn't be returning to enjoy the bragging rights and decoration that comes with the award, but surely it had been a spectacle when the Great Hall flashed green upon the announcement of the victory.

Harry had temporarily returned to his first year, when Dumbledore had turned the odds to his house's favor - and a reminiscent smile forms above his chin. It isn't as though Slytherin hasn't taken the House Cup before, but surely Draco had remembered that moment, too - the robbed expression his eleven-year-old self had donned is forever humorously carved into Harry's memory.

Something flashes in Draco's gray eyes, and a thin brow lowers curiously over one of them. "What are you so happy about, Potter? It wasn't Gryffindor that won this time, to the surprise of us all."

"Just thinking back to first year," admits Harry, chin resting atop his fist, "that's all."

"Oh, I see," starts Draco, in such a way that Harry knows to brace himself for faux-drama, "I'm here talking about my achievements and all you can do is think about yourself. Vain, Potter."

"Aren't you one to talk about vanity," retorts Harry, rolling his eyes and laughing with genuine amusement, "You were the one that started strutting around with bodyguards, second year."

"Bodyguards?" Draco looks alarmed, "Are you perchance talking about Crabbe and Goyle? God, Potter, they weren't my _bodyguards_. As unbelievable as it may seem, we were actually friends. I cared about them quite a lot," the silvery-blonde sighs, threading a hand through his fringe. Harry feels entirely guilty, having brought up the pair in such a crude way, especially considering that one of them is now deceased - and Draco looks as though he's trying to keep himself from crumbling for a moment.

"Malfoy ... I'm sorry," the words almost sound like poison, leaving his lips. He'd never thought he'd hear himself say them.

"Don't," Draco requests, raising his gaze from the table to his former-nemesis' face. "They wouldn't have been good bodyguards, anyway, considering they were scared of me."

To the brunette's shock, Draco is smiling again. He'd made a joke. It's looking as though the next event will be Kreacher coming to wake him up to start the day.

But it doesn't happen - at least, not yet. Harry smiles back, shaking his head. "I wouldn't know why. You yourself were scared of everything."

"Hey, now," silver eyes roll, and plump lips purse, "Not _everything._ I was a kid, anyway. One that was the furthest thing from being a courageously idiotic Gryffindor."

"Well, I suppose you have a point," laughs Harry, "What would you have done if I was put in Slytherin?"

The heir pauses - his expression suddenly projecting far too much serious pensiveness to be related to such a simple question. Then, the softest, most hardly-audible sigh passes the pale man's lips.

"I don't know, Potter," comes his voice in a surprisingly soft tone, "Just minutes before we were sorted, you pretty much rejected me in front of everyone. I can't say if I'd have persisted trying to befriend you or if nothing would have been different. I can say, though, that I was happy you were put in Gryffindor. It made it easier to pretend that I hated you."

"Pretend?" Harry's lips barely move with the inquisitive echo. Suddenly, he's leaning forward on the table; his proximity to Draco grows as the conversation takes an unintentionally intimate turn.

"I never really hated you, Potter. Sure, I didn't like you. I thought you were a prat - everyone seemed to love you and give you special treatment. Looking back on it, it's not like you asked for it, but I was a child. Nothing needed to make sense. And as I got older, I developed more legitimate reasons based off that initial fault." A delicate-looking hand peels away the fingerless gloves, a portion of his Healer-in-Training uniform, only to set them aside and scratch at the nape of his neck.

Harry waits a moment more to see if he'll keep speaking. His pale face almost appears luminous against the orange hues blotched across the sky, the sun nearly succumbing entirely to the influence of the evening as deep pinks, purples, and blues crown the earth in a seamless gradient, just beyond the large window. His eyes hold something he wants to say, but his lips are reluctant.

Either way, he does continue.

"A lot of it was frustration, too."

"Because I rejected you?" Harry finds himself asking, realizing too late that it hadn't exactly been the way he'd wanted to word that.

"No," begins Draco, through an amused smile. "Well ... okay, _yes_ \- but that wasn't what I was getting at. I can't believe you didn't realize it ... then again ... when you hate someone's guts and are under the impression they, too, hate yours, something like that could just fly over your head, couldn't it?"

Perplexed, green eyes phase between narrowing and widening. Harry is far from stupid - he knows what this is sounding like. But it seems so improbable that he drains the thought from his head almost as quickly as it had materialized, and goes on to make his wonder verbal.

"Malfoy ... what in Merlin's name are you talking about?"

"That means yes," the aristocrat laughs softly, and Harry hates the fact that it's such a lovely sound. "Blimey, Potter. I had a crush on you."

Silence establishes itself almost immediately. Draco could have said literally anything else at all and Harry would have believed him more than he does right now. It doesn't make any sense. For the past seven and a half years, they've only scowled upon meeting eyes. Yet this entire time, there had been some underlying feelings between them both? For certainly, Harry knows in his heart that his situation is nearly identical, save for the fact he still hasn't outwardly admitted to even himself that he had - and still _has_ \- feelings for Draco _Bloody_ Malfoy.

But he realizes something, now. The other man had used the past-tense - signifying that his feelings have come to an end - whereas Harry's have only grown and spiraled wildly out of control, over the last year specifically.

"Bloody shit ..." whispers the dark-haired of the two, but loud enough for Malfoy to hear him clearly.

"You're ... actually surprised, aren't you?" Malfoy questions, ironically his own bit of shock about him. "You really didn't know? Didn't even think about it?"

"No," Harry answers, sighing more shakily than he'd meant to allow, "I mean ... I thought about it, yeah, but it was in a ... different kind of way. I didn't think it could actually be true." He'd almost uttered 'hopeful' in place of 'different', but managed to stop himself with a plausible reluctance.

"Oh ..." the blonde nods comprehensively, lips pressing to a line and eyes breaking contact. "Actually ... Potter, there's something else I've wanted to tell you, all these years. I hadn't planned on ever admitting it, actually, but Parkinson convinced me to come clean about it, since we're ... we're friends, now."

Draco barely manages to stop it from coming out as a question. Harry's eyes dart to find his immediately, brows almost disappearing into his fringe, they rise so high. He doesn't wait for Harry to give him permission to go on, feeling as though the near decade of unspoken emotion all flooding to the surface at once may scare him away.

"You brought up second year, earlier," prefaces the fairer mage, and Harry nods dumbly. "Well ... remember, when Hermione was petrified? And you and Weasley came back later to find the ... the page crumpled up in her fist, with all the information on the Basilisk?"

Tilting his head, Harry nods again - wondering how Draco had even known about that.

The older man inhales sharply, licking his lips - a movement Harry unconsciously traces with his eyes. 

"You also remember meeting my father and I in the bookshop then, right? Right. Well ... just before you'd stormed in with the Weasleys, my father was telling me that this year was going to be a momentous year. That I shouldn't be scared, because my blood status would keep me safe when the purge began. I had no clue what he was on about, and he'd told me to go to the second level to find a certain book to prepare me for what was going to happen ... a book with a silver spine, that would only open with a certain password. I'm sure you know, the upper level is full of profiles of magical beasts. But they ... the Death Eaters, were keeping that specific one under lock and key. They didn't want any mudblo- muggle-borns to know those types of details about it. About the Basilisk." 

Harry's eyes are double their size as the story unfolds, and Malfoy sucks in another breath, though he's sure Harry has pieced the majority of the confession together, by now.

"When you entered, I ripped that page out. I got impatient - my father probably would have killed me if he'd known I'd done that. I didn't know he was going to put the diary on one of the Weasleys, but I did know he'd had it, and suddenly it was gone, after we left. He was smart not to tell me a lot about his agenda, since I was just a child, but he'd told me enough to try to get me excited about being a Death Eater, once I got older. I regurgitated almost everything he said about blood purity, but I never wanted a school, or a _world_ , with no Muggle-borns. That's why I put the page in her hand, and added the way the Basilisk was getting around, from what my father had told me. I knew you wouldn't accept it from me - hell, I really didn't _want_ you to. But if it was her, I knew you'd trust it."

It's too much to process, for Harry. Stunned, he sits in silence - eyes trained on Draco solely because he feels too frozen to move them. The confession is weighted, and it transports Harry back to the day, the moment he'd found the paper in her hand. The way Hermione had looked puzzled once it was over and he'd congratulated her for solving the mystery for them. Suddenly, everything made sense, despite the fact he'd never realized it hadn't before.

"Malfoy ..." he murmurs, shaking his head, "But how ... Why? Why didn't you just go to stop the Basilisk yourself?"

"So my father could murder me?" Draco laughs dryly, shrugging his shoulders, "Great idea, Potter. Plus ... it was a job cut out for a bunch of reckless Gryffindors. I was too afraid. It was out of the question. Not only was I not going to face that beast, but I couldn't face ... Voldemort. Even if he was just a memory, I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't ready."

It takes a solid moment for Harry to even gather his thoughts and decipher what each of them mean. A constellation of emotions is burning through his body and for a moment, he's afraid he might malfunction, like some sort of machine. His eyes find Draco's once more, not even realizing the moment they'd parted, before his lips remember how to move.

"Thank you."

Draco looks away, brushing imagined dust off his shoulder before nodding silently.

"No, really, Malfoy. Thank you. If you hadn't have done what you did-"

"I know, Potter. I know. There's no need. Please, don't."

"Why? Let me. Let me thank you, properly."

"I can't." Malfoy exhales, shaking his head vigorously, "after the way things went between us, I can't Potter. It doesn't matter if I helped, in the end. Nothing changed. I don't deserve the recognition."

"Things are changed. They are, now, at least," responds Harry, head canting slightly to the left, "I'm surprised. You love praise ... I thought you'd want to know how grateful I am. What happened afterward doesn't change what you did."

"It's not praise, Potter. It's too sincere ... please, just drop it. I don't want ... I can't stand to fall in love with you, again."

Harry nearly chokes on his own breath. "Malfoy ... God, Malfoy! Why do you keep _doing_ this - every time you nearly give me a heart attack you just keep piling it on! At least give me a chance to process everything before you drop another bomb on me, won't you?!"

The sudden shouting startles the addressed, evident by the way his eyes are wide and he flinches instantaneously. However, his shoulders drop any tenseness and he sighs breathily. "No. No, Potter, don't you see? I've held back with you long enough. I've been trying to get over you for seven years, only to keep falling deep into this pit of both love and hate for you. It's been so frustrating. I know it's selfish, but I don't care. I need to tell you the truth. For me, if not for you, too."

Harry stops, looking down to realize that in his outburst, he'd stood up. His palms are spread atop the table, steadying his matured physique as he looks Malfoy dead in the eye. Maybe he should take this example. Maybe he ought to start being truthful, too.

"You're the most gorgeous person I've ever seen in my entire life," he starts, slowly sitting back down. "Your voice is so smooth, especially when you speak softly. Even when you shout, there's this rasp that comes to it that makes my heart flutter. Your eyes are like a frozen river - they're so beautiful, and cold - but I love it. Your skin is literally flawless, it's like milk. Your hair is always shiny and it looks so damn soft, I think about playing with it all the time. You've always had the cutest nose in all of Hogwarts, your laugh is like music, and you're genuinely very funny and smart and-"

"What are you doing?" Draco interrupts, a bright flush spreading across his cheeks.

"Being honest," Harry answers, "for the first time in eight years. I've had the biggest crush on you since I first saw you and it's been driving me mad. I feel guilty because it started as a physical attraction, but in the last year, now that I've gotten to know who you really are, I'm in deep, Malfoy. You're so cute, it's not even fair."

"Potter-"

"Malfoy," Harry breathes, hands slithering across the table to take Draco's.

The heir looks down, blush deepening as he works his lower lip between his teeth.

"Oh yeah," Harry says, breathless from all his confessing, "Your lips. God, your lips."

Immediately, Draco releases his lower tier and huffs indignantly. "Stop it! This isn't fair!"

"You started it!" Harry argues, leaning closer over the table and using his grip on the older man's hands to yank him forward, "What happened to getting it all off your chest at once?!"

"That's different, I prepared for this! You're just blurting out eight years' worth of wet dreams!"

"Is that what you think this is? Damnit, Malfoy, I'm falling in love with you! Are you bloody stupid?"

"No!" Malfoy growls, planting his knee up on the table and grabbing Harry by the collar, "But you are." Before either of them can say what's happening, their lips are crashing together desperately. It's unclear who exactly is responsible for initiating, but the contact is so forceful and intense, the flesh of their mouths bruises near-instantly.

Malfoy's grip tightens on Potter's collar, trying to pull him closer despite their achievement of maximum proximity. Harry's hands drag their way up Draco's slim but lean waist, his Healer robes starting to ride up his rear, exposing the fitted trousers underneath, this the unfairly round shape of the heir's ass. Unaware of whatever health regimen Draco had adopted into adulthood, whatever it was has turned his willowy form into something far _sexier,_ despite him always being a beautiful creature.

Draco isn't sure whether he's moaning at Harry's tongue sliding into his mouth or his hands rubbing down, over his ass - but he hardly thinks about anything but the pleasure he's feeling, and returning it with the utmost ability. He starts to suck on the Auror-to-be's tongue, pushing back into his hands wantonly. Harry had hoped, once he'd sparked up a sexual hunger for Malfoy, that the older boy would be a needy little thing, to compliment Harry's own bedroom preferences. God, is he the furthest thing from disappointed.

Both of them are moaning and rutting against whatever parts of each other they can reach before Draco realizes, through his adrenaline, what exactly they're doing and _where_.

"Potter," he moans, separating their lips and tongues, though their faces are still considerably pressed together, "we ought to find somewhere more private-"

"I'll say," comes a familiar voice from the threshold of the room, both men coming to realize to their horror that it belongs to Hermione.

They both are frozen in position, eyes stupidly large and focused on the woman with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Get a room, boys."

**Author's Note:**

> [follow me on tumblr if you want lol](http://malfoid.tumblr.com/)  
>  I really don't know what this was but I wanted to write a little mini-multi chapter fic because most of my work up to this point has been oneshots and I didn't want to cram this all into one.   
> Also smut is incoming, hence the rating lol.  
> Please review!!


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